The visual quality of architectural heritage is crucial to the preservation of architectural features, enhancement of the environmental quality, and conservation of the sustainable development and adaptive use of architectural heritage. Few studies have explored the visual behavior characteristics of rural architectural heritage and which elements influence visual perception. Our study used eye-tracking technology to explore this issue. The results indicate that participants have different visual behavior characteristics for architectural heritage in different scenarios, with five eye movement metrics showing statistical differences. Featured elements attracted more visual attention. The visual behavior characteristics were related to the area, relative area, distance from center, and perimeter. Based on the results, decision-makers can target the sustainable and virtuous development of architectural heritage and enhance environmental quality.

Although physiological measurements, subjective evaluation and other methods have been applied to visual attention research, architects still lack a systematic quantitative classification method when assessing the visual attention to built colonial heritage. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between people’s visual behaviour and subjective evaluation when observing built colonial heritage and to construct a prediction model based on eye-movement metrics and subjective evaluation indicators to distinguish the visual attention to built colonial heritage. This study recorded data from 54 participants while observing five scenes of built colonial heritage, and the results showed that participants had different visual behaviours and subjective evaluations when viewing built colonial heritage in different scenes. And visual attention to built colonial heritage was negatively correlated with the average saccades peak velocity and average saccades amplitude and positively correlated with the average pupil diameter; visual attention was correlated with 12 subjective evaluation indicators. The eye-movement metrics and subjective evaluation indicators with correlation to visual attention were used as input variables to construct a prediction model of visual attention to built colonial heritage based on the BP neural network. Different built colonial heritage’s low, middle and high visual attention were identified with high accuracy (74.46%). This quantitative method can help architects to measure the visual attention to built colonial heritage to develop conservation and renewal strategies.

Objective: The objective of this study is to explore healthcare resource accessibility in Harbin, a typical city in a cold region in China. Background: Recently, investments in the construction of medical resources have been increasing annually in China, and consequently, the allocation of these resources has improved. Snow and ice on surfaces in China’s cold regions have certain effects on the traffic capacity of urban roads, leading to a great difference in the accessibility of medical resources in winter and summer. Methods: The basic spatial data, including spatial road data, medical facility data, and population distribution data, are analyzed using geographic information system. Then, a spatial barrier model is used to measure healthcare accessibility based on geographic and population weighting; we explore the accessibility of hospitals under the influence of weather by defining a novel distance attenuation function. Finally, the accessibility of medical institutions in the study area is explored by analyzing data about the related separation factors. Results: It was found that the spatial distribution of medical resources was not equal, and the dominant resources were concentrated in the city center. Some regions are always in an advantageous position regardless of traffic conditions. In contrast, in areas far from the city center, the accessibility of medical resources significantly decreases in winter. Conclusions: These results will help optimize the layout of medical institutions and improve medical equality and propose strategies for the optimization of the accessibility of urban medical institutions in cold regions of China.